


people like me are not on TV

by sam_suffers



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Autism, Bullying, Canon Autistic Character, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25489870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_suffers/pseuds/sam_suffers
Summary: Abed Nadir and his life, coming to terms with himself, being on the spectrum and falling in love with his best friend.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Britta Perry
Comments: 13
Kudos: 106





	people like me are not on TV

**Author's Note:**

> aye this isn't really worth the read? just kind of me rambling about my latest obsession and projecting a bit (as per usual)

Abed Nadir was different, that’s what everyone always told him, ever since he was little - He was different.

Over time he had realised that difference was wrong and that society didn’t have a place for people like him, at that age, he hadn’t worked out what “people like him” exactly meant just that he was different and different was bad.

His mother left when he was 6. While his dad never said that it was his fault, he knew in hindsight that it was. They were always fighting, even after she left, over the phone or whenever she came to visit. They were always fighting about him, and falafel, but mostly him. Sometimes they fought about him _and_ falafel.

His dad wanted him to run the family business. His mum thought that that was impossible, he was awful at maths and following instructions and dealing with people and staying calm, always had been.

High school was difficult, of course it would be, it always is for people like him. TV says that people like him are the freaks, geeks, nerds and idiots (though he was arguably smart, he still struggled enough at maths for teachers to write him off). TV is always right. Except, that doesn’t quite sum Abed up, he probably is a geek; he can recite the nights TV schedule in full and has read more comic books than the rest of his class combined, but that’s still not quite right.

Being a geek gets you shoved into lockers and left there but it doesn’t explain why he can never quite grasp _why._ When people’s faces contort into shapes that he barely recognises but can understand as ****bad,**** he doesn’t understand what he’d done. He learns to say “please”, “thank you” and “I’m sorry”, he copies the people on TV that aren’t freaks, geeks or nerds and he finds that he’s able to get by in life a bit better.

But it’s still not right. His dad thinks that he’s “better” and he doesn’t understand quite why that rubs him the wrong way.

He still talks about TV, of course he does, that’s how his brain works. TV is the filter through which he processes the inane and unpredictable, it’s bonus scenes and plot twists. When he gets bullied in high school, it’s character development or his back-story, maybe he becomes a villain? Or an anti-hero. That would be interesting.

He doubts that he’d make a good hero. Heroes need to be strong and relatable, a blank canvas with vague positive traits so that people can project better versions of themselves onto them. He wouldn’t make a good hero or even a villain probably. Writers tend to pay less attention to the back-story and motivations of the villain but they’re still important, people wouldn’t understand him enough to sympathise with him.

Then he meets Jeff Winger, first week at Greendale Community College, the only place his dad would let him go. Jeff is everything a hero needs to be, or at least the main character. Superhero stories tend not to be set in community colleges but its a good setup for a sitcom. That makes Abed the comic relief character, he’s quirky and sometimes his misunderstandings can be humorous to others.

He doesn’t mind himself then, his role in the story mostly makes sense. Then he talks to Britta, the Love Interest (with a heart of gold) to the main character, and she mentions that her brother works with autistic kids. He makes a note to google that later.

And he does.

And things make sense for the first time in his life.

Kind of?

It still doesn’t explain his role, the Token Disabled one? They tend to only get the Special Episode treatment but his shows been going on for at least two seasons at this point and he’s still there. And it’s still a sitcom, too many hijinks for it to be anything else. He considered that it might be a romcom for a while, with a typical love triangle set up. But it didn’t reach a romcom conclusion.

But there’s Troy. Troy takes his mind off it all. He can talk to Troy.

Troy doesn’t talk to him like a child or an alien or a robot or an _idiot_. He teaches Troy to study and helps him with everything but maths, which they both kind of work out together, in return, Troy helps him live life. Troy acts as a bridge between the Abed World and the rest of the world, understanding Abed but probably belonging elsewhere.

Troy is amazing. He never tells him to shut up or asks him if he knows that they aren’t in a TV show, they both know that deep down he does but deep down is painful and he’d rather ignore it. Fantasy is a coping mechanism, for Troy too - They both appreciate a few hours in the Dreamatorium after a stressful day, roleplaying something from Inspector Spacetime or whatever movie they’d recently watched. It was nice and it was just for them, a comfy world. 

He thinks that maybe Troy would be happier with a different best friend but when he stars dating Britta, Abed can barely cope with it and realises that he needs Troy more than he had previously realised. Troy had stop becoming a bridge and was now a neccesity. He hates that he feels so jealous of the two, surely he should be more happy for his best friend? He tells himself that it’s because Troy isn’t happy with Britta and that’s why he wants them to break up. He feels guilty when they do.

Maybe they were the romcom after all.

Abed has never been good at reading faces or understanding tone and inflection, he couldn’t trust himself to understand the looks that Troy gave him sometimes, lingering glances, and tight hugs. Sharing a bed when one of them had a nightmare. Cuddling during a sad movie sometimes.

So what if he thought that maybe Troy loved him, he would never mention it and so Abed didn’t either - That’s not what people like him did. He tried to just focus on other girls but he could never fully commit, his mind was just full of TV and Troy, there wasn’t any room left.

And then Troy leaves, and he’s alone again. This time, he can cope a bit better but this time, he has a sinking feeling that he’s not coming back, he’s circumventing the globe, not working at the AV repair annex. They don’t have enough seasons left for Troy to come back in time.

He’s fine.

He’s not. But that’s okay, because TVs still there.

But it’s not okay because TV isn’t the same without Troy, even when Annie sits in his seat while they watch reruns of Inspector Spacetime or Couger Town.

He doesn’t know who he is anymore - Without Troy there’s no one to laugh at his references, no one that understands his sensory problems, no one to listen and understand. Annie tries her best and he survives, but it’s not the same.

Without an audience, he’s barely a comic relief character, Love Stuck Fool, maybe? But no-one else knows it. When his friends joked that he was Britta’s boyfriend’s boyfriend, his heart missed a beat. But that’s all they were to everyone else, good friends and a source of comic homoerotisicm.

So he waits.

He waits for Troy to come back.

He does more research, he’s on the spectrum. He isn’t a TV character because if he admits that he was probably autistic aloud, he’d be one of the first autistic characters on TV (Sheldon doesn’t count). So he can’t be a TV character. That’s the reason why he could never find people like him in the shows he loved, they just weren’t there.

So, he’s just Abed Nadir, with a problematic home life and a depressing back-story, a missing love interest and a fimmaking degree.

He’s Abed Nadir.

He moves to Los Angeles and this time, he’s ready to begin his life.

If there was a season 7 or a movie, he’d jump at the chance to come back home, if Troy ever reached out to him, he’d respond in a heartbeat, but he knows that there’s no story left. There’s no story left.

It’s just him now. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and critisism welcome and appreciated


End file.
